Forum Discussion
Taskbar freezes in place, hiding bottom of apps
I have my taskbar set to automatically hide itself, which is important to my workflow. HOWEVER, after a few hours of work, the taskbar reappears and freezes in place, hiding the bottom of whatever window I'm working on: the Send button for emails, the worksheet tabs for Excel, etc. (All Windows programs would normally shrink to fit the smaller window as soon as the taskbar reappears, but they continue to fill the whole screen, as if the taskbar is not there, except that the taskbar is there and hides their lowest section.)
3 Replies
Have had this for years. Each time it happens I open Taskbar Manager/scroll to Windows Explorer (near bottom)/right click/Restart/close Task Manager. This sorts it out for that session. It has been a continual cause of complaint on the forum and at one point I think it was acknowleged as a problem by MS but was considered a low priority. Does anyone know a way of making the above sequence in to a one (or two) button fix instead of two right clicks, two left clicks and a longish scroll?
Some third-party apps (like display managers, window management tools) can interfere. Try booting into Safe Mode. Press Windows + R, type msconfig, go to Boot tab, check Safe Boot, and restart. If the problem doesn't occur in Safe Mode, identify and disable recent third-party software.
Taskbar-related freezes and visual glitches like the one you're describing can stem from various issues, including explorer.exe bugs, driver conflicts, or display scaling problems. Since you're using auto-hide for the taskbar, and it reappears and then causes windows to freeze or not resize properly.
